


The Ballad of the Orphan Soldier

by SpiritLamp



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Autumn, Bittersweet Ending, Bucky Barnes-centric, First Time, Foreshadowing, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Inspired by Literature, M/M, Rimming, Sad and Beautiful, Sex, Soldiers, Top Steve Rogers, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiritLamp/pseuds/SpiritLamp
Summary: Bucky always seemed to smell the same. Like distant smoke and sharp cold air, like the damp that lingers in piles of cadmium and carmine leaves, like the end of summer.





	The Ballad of the Orphan Soldier

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bittermarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittermarch/gifts).



No matter how much dirt he tracked into their tent, or how many days it had been before their infantry had the chance to shower, to Steve, Bucky always seemed to smell the same. Like distant smoke and sharp cold air, like the damp that lingers in piles of cadmium and carmine leaves, like the end of summer. Rogers wondered to himself when Bucky was still small enough to fit completely beneath his arm while he slept if that scent was entirely something he imagined. Some sensory poetic turn to the idea that children, for Barnes, was over. That this war had marked the end of Bucky's boyish dog days of summer. But Steve knew that colouring Bucky’s world so artistically was like dusting gold leaf over dried grass; childhood innocence had never been something that Barnes had worn comfortably. The death of his mother, separation from his sister and attachment to a father who threw himself into a thankless military career to avoid answering his son’s questions, had all worked together to age Barnes prematurely. These things had silenced and hardened him so much that when the slip came to tell Bucky his father had died in France, his grief was almost indistinguishable from his relief. 

When Steve’s own father was drunk in a very particular way, he used to tell him a story about a man he’d known in the 'Great' War. His name had been John Marshall and he, his father explained, was an orphan. In fact, whenever Joseph told this story he repeated that fact like it was the chorus of a song. The Ballad of the Orphan Soldier. The story always ended with the same tragedy. Marshall, knowing Joe Rogers had a beautiful wife and a young son, had climbed up out of the trench and went to his knees sputtering the _Our Father_ beneath a hail of German bullets — A distraction to let Joe crawl back to safety. Orphans, Joseph explained, made the best soldiers. They only had themselves to think about, and in a war, a single life never felt as though it’s much of a loss. 

Marshall had only been sixteen. 

Rogers knew that his father wasn’t the only man who’d seen the value in a soldier with nothing to lose. As Bucky had grown older and started laying his head on Steve’s shoulder instead of burrowing beneath his arm, Steve had begun thinking more about his father’s old friend. Each time he did, it felt as though he was adding weight to his own heart. He knew that Barnes was trained and skilled in ways which Steve was never supposed to know about. But the people in charge of Bucky’s secrets, Howard in particular, had never been able to hold out when Steve wanted something badly enough. And so he’d learned. Steve had learned that the brown-eyed, round-faced child he’d met selling cigarettes, was so much more. That he was trained up to do terrible things, and he’d done them. Because he’d only had himself to think about, and a single life wasn't worth all that much. 

Above all else, Steve had tried to show Barnes that that wasn’t true. He’d needed Bucky to see his value, not in the bullets he was able to put into Nazis, but in his heart, his creativity, his capacity to love so completely and so shamelessly that he made Steve remember what that was like. What it was just to look at someone and let everything outside that moment fade to nothing. It had been difficult for Steve to admit to himself that he didn’t just want to be the abstracted object of Bucky’s attention and affection. He wanted to be a part of what Bucky was feeling. Maybe it could save them both from the hollowness of the war. If they were together, then neither of them were quite orphans anymore.

That first night had started the way all their nights did. It was October, but by then Steve had been with Barnes for so long that the scent of damp leaves and threats of frost just meant the very air smelled like Bucky. It was intoxicating enough that Steve wasn’t sure he would last another day. His mind was made up for him before they’d even set foot into his quarters. Since Camp Lehigh, they’d shared a bed. Now that Barnes was older they had two cots, but every night Bucky roped them together with their belts. They never spoke of this ritual. Like with so many other aspects of their relationship, this had been agreed upon by their silence alone. 

Stripped down to loose shorts and undershirts, Bucky made a pillow of Steve’s arm as he always did. He looked at Steve (when he thought Rogers couldn’t see) with the indecisive longing that became more subtle as he’d gotten older, but perhaps also far more deeply felt. And then he shut is eyes, surrendering himself to another restless sleep filled with desires and promises that all the bravery in the world couldn’t help him see through.

Then, Steve touched him. Rogers could hear the breath catch in Bucky’s throat as he slipped the fingers of his free hand beneath the hem of his undershirt. He splaying them across Bucky's chest. It wasn't the boldest of gestures, not a feverish request or an impatient kiss. It was a question, and the increasing speed of Bucky's heartbeat which Steve could feel in his fingertips was the only answer that Barnes needed to give. Keeping him close, his head still resting on Steve's arm, Rogers moved half over him. He brought his knee down between Bucky's thighs. He slid his hand across Bucky's chest, bringing it high enough to stretch the limits of the man's cotton undershirt and rest his thumb against Bucky's throat. Steve kissed him as he breathed in the smell of leaves, harvested grains and window frost. 

As far back as Steve had known him, Barnes had never been passive. He never let life, even its tragedies, happen to him. He's wanted to control his own destiny, as much as that meant for an orphaned kid kept on a military base as a kind of mascot. But he'd worked hard. He'd proven himself, saving Steve's life and the lives of the other Invaders countless times. Bucky just wasn't going to let the war happen to him without doing everything he could to personally change the course of it. And tonight, Steve noted as Barnes slowly moved to grip his arm, he wasn't just going to let this just happen to him, either. 

Some fumbling out of their clothes, a series of frantic kisses that left their lips bruised, and Steve had finally managed to get behind Bucky on their roped-together cots. Barnes had one knee on either mattress, his arms were folded and his teeth were planted in his own forearm to keep himself silent as Steve sucked and spread him open with his tongue. Steve stayed there testing Bucky's limits and feeling his struggle in the uncontrollable twitch of the back of thighs. He stayed there until Bucky whimpered for Steve to spread his attention, and his mouth, over the throbbing ache that had thus far been neglected. 

Steve obeyed, letting Bucky throw himself around on the mattress and get on his back. Once he was settled, Rogers made Bucky show him what he wanted by pressing two fingers in between his teeth. Steve mirrored the other man's actions exactly where he wanted him too, stretching his lips over the parts of Barnes he'd felt, hard and wanting, cloaked behind sheets and clothes and uncertainty for so long. But there was nothing hidden now. Steve slipped his wet fingers from Bucky's mouth, moving them instead to where his tongue had previously been. Rogers pressed, caressed, twisted, and slipped both inside. The noise Barnes made before he managed to ram his knuckles against his teeth sent a rush down Steve's spine like a sudden Autumn breeze. Bucky was flooding his senses, the way he smelled, and sounded and tasted. It was just a few seconds more before he also flooded Steve's mouth.

Months back, Rogers and Barnes had found themselves deep behind enemy lines, and all but completely cornered in a burned out windmill, somewhere in Holland. Bucky had climbed the blackened unstable ladders, against all of Steve's warnings and pleas, positioned himself on a flame-scarred windowsill and used his rifle to blow back the advancing Nazi troops. Bucky's actions, rendered possible by his unique ability to rope together fearlessness and intuition had saved them that day. But it had also made Steve very aware of just how much of an orphan soldier Bucky was. 

Steve was afraid of that fearlessness in Bucky Barnes then, and he was almost afraid of it now. He watched as Bucky dragged a First Aid kit out from under the cot frame, spilling the contents across the tangle of sheets recklessly as he threw himself down across the split in mattresses. Steve kneeled on the bed, knees between Bucky's, spreading them wider apart. He found the jar that Bucky had gestured to: _Vaseline White Petroleum Jelly_. Bucky's whole body seemed to respond just to the simple sound of the lid coming off. Steve kissed the base of Bucky's spine, before trailing his mouth lower, working hard to keep Barnes present as he stalled long enough to spread the contents of the jar across himself and over his fingers. The sounds that Barnes failed to muffle were the only encouragement Steve needed to bite down on the curves of Bucky's backside as he spread him open with desperate, plunging turns of his knuckles. 

They were silent, and the world outside those torn-up mattresses was gone. Time, the war, their heartbeats had all seemed to stop when Steve finally pressed himself into Bucky's heat. And when Rogers started to move, he moved with the kind of force a person might need to restart the world turning. One of Bucky's frame-securing leather belts broke. The legs of the cot dug trenches into the wooden floor like lovers gouge their initials into trees. Rogers buried himself in Bucky. Every hope he had for the future, every way that he'd ever wanted to love and never could, every orphaned dream, split lip and Brooklyn black eye, every _tomorrow_ that Steve ever wanted to see was there in the marks he painted onto Bucky's shoulders with his teeth. Bucky smelled like falling leaves, and dusk, earth, darkness and distant smoke. 

Steve had restarted the world, buried in everything that Bucky had ever sought to give him, but when the world changes so to do the seasons -- and winter was so very close.


End file.
